December 4, 2007

Jack Hawkins makes his selection. You know, I used to go over to see what was going on on that hugely popular blog, and I would find things I could write about here. But I gave up looking because I encountered too many unfamiliar names writing things that seemed like they belonged buried deep in the comments. Why did I care what these people were writing? Who are all these "diarists"? I didn't see the point of critiquing what they wrote. Where's Kos?

(What would my blog be like if I chose commenters I liked and gave them access to the front page? Now, it might be really good. But it would be an altogether different blog.)

Let's see what 10 things Jack came up with:

9) ... So, is the argument that Jesus didn't have a d*ck?" -- Cenk Uygur

Okay, I cut most of the quote, because it was just dumb meandering about a chocolate Jesus and why are people so uptight about it. It reads like a transcript of a high schooler's late-night YouTube. I'll just turn on the camera and see what comes out. Presumably, "Cenk Uygur" is the name or pen name of the person doing the typing. Who cares?

I switch to skimming:

... sallykohn

... Archangel M

... rainmanjr

... slw0606

... GreyHawk

... bluedogtxn

... Granny Doc

1) "... A man’s killing list is a very personal matter. It should be between him and those persistent voices in his head. So to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families, and yet, I support them. Thank God I live in a free country. Thank You." -- AWhitneyBrown

Who are they? What's going on over there on Daily Kos? As I said, I don't read it anymore.

UPDATE: I'm criticized in the comments — and on other blogs — for failing to understand the Kos website. If that's your criticism, my criticism of you is that you've failed to understand this post. My point is that the site has become cluttered and uninviting to someone who isn't into cozying up inside the group. I don't want to figure it out. I saw Jack's post, and my response to it is that I have no idea whether the writers he picked out are ones who are supposed to count or not. And I don't know whether AWhitneyBrown is the person who used to be on "Saturday Night Live" or someone appropriating his name.

Is this a call for all your pseudonymous commenters to come out of the closet? (Or stop posting?) (Or at least not blog that way?) OK. I'll start. My middle initial is "E," and I'll refrain from posting on this thread.

AWhitneyBrown may be intelligent and funny but not particularly consistent. do I still support the individual men and women who have given so much to serve their country? No...blah blah blah...and yet, I support them. I'm not fat and I don't whine, but color me confused.

A man’s killing list is a very personal matter. It should be between him and those persistent voices in his head. So to sum up, I don’t like our troops, I don’t like what they’re doing, I don’t like their fat, whining families, and yet, I support them. Thank God I live in a free country. Thank You." -- AWhitneyBrown

I believe this is the actual AWB that appeared on SNL. It sounds like him, and its just as intelligent and funny as the real AWB. (THAT IS TO SAY NOT FUNNY OR INTELLIGENT AT ALL!)

Sadly, his career ground to a halt when he stopped giving Lorne Michaels BJs.

"it was just dumb meandering about a chocolate Jesus and why are people so uptight about it."Well, it depends. Has someone named the chocolate Jesus Mohammad? Don't want to insult the Sudanians.

I remember when Brown gave his little speech. He is neither intelligent or funny. However, he regards himself as such, and in that crowd, that's enough. I would love to hear the entire thing again though. Maybe at a USO show. Then it would be funny. At least the end. And by the end, I mean at the point it ended, not necessarily the planned end.

That would be a lot of fun if you let the comments post the main comment on your blog. Just as an experiment or a way to switch it up, sort of a one shot Christmas special. You know like when David Bowie and Michael Jackson guested on the Bing Crosby Christmas special. They could email the post to you and you could put it up credited to whoever sent it to you. I admit it might be a little time consuming, but it beats wandering around the Promenade photographing rare clumbers trying to lick their own balls. Just sayn'.

Yes he did. And the whole Jackson 5 were guests on the Osmond family special as well. Ebony and Ivory. When they all sang and danced together in a big production number is was like the time you had the box of black and white cookies in the trunk and you were sliding around on the icy roads and the spare crushed the cake box and all you had was this crazy mish-mosh, tasty and fun but very very strange. Only in America baby.

For most of us when we says we "play golf" what we mean is we own some clubs and will be spending the next few hours chasing multiple white balls pretty much all over the course pissing off the old people behind us until one of three things happen. We finish 18 holes, we run out of golf balls, the golf course guys kick us out. However, saying we are playing golf is much shorter.

It could be cool. The professor could assign topics to take the commenter out of his or her comfort zone. It would be like homework. Then she could mark it (on the curve of course) and mock us as the morons we are. It's the spirit of Christmas……Do hear what I hear?.

When I was a freshman at the U of Michigan, the U was in the process of replacing the police patrols of Ann Arbor with a dedicated campus police force. Well, that didn't go over too well with campus lefties:--When trying to put up a sign at a football game saying "no guns, no cops no code" we mature freshmen began chanting "More cops! Bigger Guns!" We got about a hundred students going, laughing all the way, before a lefty a few rows up took exception--and attacked the nearest chanter! So much for "tolerance"....--Normal students would cross campus and see bizarre chalkings on the pavement like "30,000 bullets, 30,000 students, get the picture?" It turns out that someone FOIAed the expenditures of the campus police and was shocked by the bullet count. One wonders if they've ever heard of the concept of "target practice."--I walked into a nearly empty 300-place lecture hall 20 minutes before class to see a protestor chalking up on the board the no-cops mantra and a call to yet another protest. I read aloud the words, then rolled my eyes and said "Jesus, take a valium!" Tolerant Lefty turned around and screamed "F*** YOU, A$$HOLE! YOU GET SHOT!" and stormed out. The 20 or so other students there and I were amazed. Such deep-core hatred!

Well, 17 years later and U of M is not a police state, no students have been shot, crime has gone down, and there is a professional police force on campus. And the lefty dorks have doubtless moved on to their next persecution delusion with equal venom for any opposition, having never bothered to learn from past experience.

To clarify: the lefties were trying to put up that sign over the scoreboard at the stadium. They found that the students wouldn't let them, so they had to go to the other end. (Why the ushers didn't deal with them, I don't know.)

I realize that everyone's interest in A Whitney Brown has been fully exhausted, but I just wanted to say that I always liked him on Saturday Night Live. And I thought he had a nice haircut back then. But, of course, I haven't thought about him in at least 10 years.

I love the left getting their Puritan on! What with the carping about Althouse drinking wine and the prim condemnations of Giuliani's divorces and the gleeful outing and humiliation of men guilty of "gaying while Republican"... what's next? Public burnings of Beatles' records? Hemline checks at the polls? Making adulteresses wear a big, red (and purposely unfashionable) "A" on their high, starched bodices? Katrina vanden Heuvel changing the name of her magazine to "The Carrie Nation"?

Mmm, kwistopher, like a warm f**k-sock passed around at a frat house circle jerk. You little minx! If it wouldn't land me on the dunking stool before the Supreme Moral Council, I'd show you how to wing your nuts.

Mmm, kwistopher, like a warm f**k-sock passed around at a frat house circle jerk. You little minx! If it wouldn't land me on the dunking stool before the Supreme Moral Council, I'd show you how to wing your nuts

Gosh, is Thers not the very blogic embodiment of a splash of liquid nitrogen on the balls at the brink of the promise of coitus?

Care to address the simple criticism that Althouse's inability to distinguish blah dee f**king blah blah. God, it's like that scene in "The Shining" where Nicholson's character is making out with the icy-hot chick in Room 237 and she turns into the laughing, rotting corpse woman! Talk about harshing someone's mellow. Or mellowing someone's harsh, as the case may be. Don't you have an overpopulated developing nation to help drop their population growth by 50% or something?

Forget nasally little runt Gonzalez and his waterboarding. Just unleash Thers into the room and the Jihadi will confess just to keep from dying of boredom.

Pretty much, yeah. Or you could have L. Frank Baum's version -- "Life and Adventures of Santa Claus." The big dramatic moment being whenn Santa's immortal friends wipe out of existence a group of not quite immortals who have been bothering Claus:

Then Ak leaned upon his gleaming ax and turned to look over the field of battle he saw the few Giants who were able to run disappearing over the distant hills on their return to Tatary. The Goblins had perished every one, as had the terrible Dragons, while all that remained of the wicked Awgwas was a great number of earthen hillocks dotting the plain.

And now the immortals melted from the Valley like dew at sunrise, to resume their duties in the Forest, while Ak walked slowly and thoughtfully to the house of Claus and entered.

"You have many toys ready for the children," said the Woodsman, "and now you may carry them across the plain to the dwellings and the villages without fear."

To get back to Althouse's original post for a minute, we can see she wrote:

...But I gave up looking because I encountered too many unfamiliar names writing things that seemed like they belonged buried deep in the comments. Why did I care what these people were writing? Who are all these "diarists"? I didn't see the point of critiquing what they wrote. Where's Kos?

She is asking about diarists. And, indeed, she is a little confused about their status and their relationship to the main page. I can tell you, as a casual visitor, I have been, too.

She concludes:

Who are they? What's going on over there on Daily Kos? As I said, I don't read it anymore.

Those look like questions to me, not "a simple error on a matter of obvious fact."

There are some answers on this page. It's old (2004), but it clearly explains the underlying format and the relationship of diarists to the rest of the site:

Since October, Markos' site has been powered by Scoop, which is an open source content management system that was born from a community site called Kuro5hin. It's a multi-user system, where many people can post (like Slashdot or MetaFilter). Scoop creates a site in a weblog-like format, but it has other features appropriate to a multi-user system. Like Diaries.

A Diary is a place where someone can post entries to their own little sub-section. As its name implies, a Diary is a private space. In Scoop-powered sites, the Diaries are not subject to the usual rules for story posting. There is no review process or voting, for example. The poster can just post whatever they please. And, usually, the posts are more personal, more intimate. It's called a "diary," after all.

Though Markos is the main administrator of the Daily Kos, he is not the only poster. In fact, anyone can create an account and post to their own diary (after waiting through a one week warm up period). Diary entries are not posted to the home page - instead they appear on the Diaries page. Why? Because Diaries are not news - they're a different kind of content.

This matters because Markos' original comment did not appear as a story on the main page of Daily Kos. It didn't even appear as an entry in Markos' Diary. It was posted in response to a Diary entry by another user altogether.

This last paragraph refers to an old controversy about something Kos wrote about "mercenaries" in Iraq. You can read about it on the linked page.

Anyway, to those of us used to the simple, linear format of Blogger, TypePad, etc., the more social network types of sites can be confusing. Add to that the fact that Kos has been undergoing maintenance (it is, in fact, completely down right now), and there have been times today when only the Diaries page was responding, it is understandable that a casual visitor might be left wondering what's going on.

Should Althouse have nailed absolutely everything about Kos before mentioning it? Sure, given the potential for a blogswarm of Kos Kidz. But, really, there is no great intellectual crisis here.

A perhaps greater failing of Althouse is to have linked to that dumb Right Wing News site at all. Talk about idiotic commenters! But of course in my world, Kos and the rightwing nuts richly deserve each other, leaving, I hope, a little space for normal people.

"So Ann tell us which commenters you like and might choose for your front page."

I hope you all write as if you were trying out for the position, but anyone can see that one of them would be Palladian. And that's even before seeing his sublime contributions to the thread last night.

Here he is responding to the trite dumb accusation that I'm a drunk:

"I love the left getting their Puritan on! What with the carping about Althouse drinking wine and the prim condemnations of Giuliani's divorces and the gleeful outing and humiliation of men guilty of "gaying while Republican"... what's next? Public burnings of Beatles' records? Hemline checks at the polls? Making adulteresses wear a big, red (and purposely unfashionable) "A" on their high, starched bodices? Katrina vanden Heuvel changing the name of her magazine to "The Carrie Nation"?"

Ha ha.

Jennifer's right:

"♥, Palladian. Just ♥."

Of course, christopher can't deal with it:

"I love wingnuts trying to rationalize their own hypocrisy!"

Is dumb little chris — "kwissy" — accusing Palladian of being any kind of Puritan?

Palladian responds:

"Mmm, kwistopher, like a warm f**k-sock passed around at a frat house circle jerk. You little minx! If it wouldn't land me on the dunking stool before the Supreme Moral Council, I'd show you how to wing your nuts."

Can kwissy fight back from that?

"Didn't I see you in Anaheim last week? Trying to cop a feel off of Goofy?"

???

Then Thers — whose scummy little blog encouraged a stalker the other day — shows up to complain about my "inability to distinguish between main page posts and diaries at Daily Kos."

Uh, Thers, I don't spend enough time on Kos to sort through all the clutter, but it seems to me the diary stuff ends up on the front page too. What are "diary rescues" and so forth? It's a big mess. Plus there are many regular writers besides Kos. I can't keep track of who's who. Who are supposed to be the writers to take seriously and who are the local color? Is awhitneybrown actually that guy who used to be on snl? I have no idea. Anyway, for this post, I just read Hawkins, and my point is, the Kos site isn't working for me. I'm someone who wants to dip in and see what they're saying on the left, but I don't do that anymore. The place is set up for insiders. I don't know what to make of the quotes Jack picked out. Do they count as Kos or are they more like the comments? I don't know, and not because I'm incapable of understanding, because I'm unwilling to spend the time to sort it out. The site is a mess to my eye.

Meanwhile, Palladian is back:

"Anyway, kwissy, you're driving me mad. I like nothing more in my men than your winning beige-lemon yellow combination of bland and self-righteously sour. You're a wild young buck in suede loafers, aren't you?! Mmm, you're probably unshaven and unwashed, adding that alluring touch of 200-grit facial abrasiveness and heady man-musk to your already arousingly cynical countenance! O cruel tease! Come with me on the bumpy ride down the road to serfdom!"

Just taunting poor kwis, who goes back to his Puritan insults:

"Wow. Palladian's really been nipping at the cooking sherry again."

"Nipping at the cooking sherry"? He adopts the phraseology of senior citizens half a century ago. Lord. Are you watching reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies" or something as you sit there with your laptop and rack your brain for an insult at 11 at night? And what are you drinking? Cocoa? Do you use any substances yourself or are you actually the abstemious little prick you pretend to be? (I'm not sure which is less attractive!)

Palladian, perceiving that I'm not monitoring comments – was I doing something that Puritans disapprove of or not? — engages the reprehensible encourager of stalkers, Thers:

"Gosh, is Thers not the very blogic embodiment of a splash of liquid nitrogen on the balls at the brink of the promise of coitus? Care to address the simple criticism that Althouse's inability to distinguish blah dee f**king blah blah. God, it's like that scene in "The Shining" where Nicholson's character is making out with the icy-hot chick in Room 237 and she turns into the laughing, rotting corpse woman! Talk about harshing someone's mellow. Or mellowing someone's harsh, as the case may be. Don't you have an overpopulated developing nation to help drop their population growth by 50% or something?Forget nasally little runt Gonzalez and his waterboarding. Just unleash Thers into the room and the Jihadi will confess just to keep from dying of boredom."

Palladian turns back to little kwis:

"Cooking sherry? What.The.F**k? It's the best Amontillado here, lovebunny. Here, let me show you the new cask of it I just got. Follow me into the wine cellar!"

Confronted with literary allusion, what does kwis give us:

"Go to sleep. One more drink and you're obviously going to hurl."

Have two commenters ever been so mismatched?

JohnAnnArbor — "Great story. Then the bricks..." — offers his appreciation to Palladian.

Mr. Forward, hilariously: "Oh crap, cooking sherry and armadillos all over the living room, A. Whitney Brown on the turntable, people I've never seen before passed out on the couch, whose idea was it to go Kos's anyway?" At 4:54 AM.

Thanks for carrying on all night and fending off the execrable chris and thers.

I love the logic *cough* by Thers and thems. Just because there is a ton of vile crud there doesn't mean anything, because anyone can put that up. True, but that crud is *popular* with the lefty wingnuts over there-- it it wasn't, they would avoid the site for being overrun by crud.

They want the best of both worlds-- an open forum to air their unpalatable and unhinged inner thoughts, without anyone holding them to account for liking the content.

To their dismay, we don't believe that they read Hustler for the articles. They are there for the smut.

Ann, Ann, Ann -- you really never know when to leave it alone, do you.

Here he is responding to the trite dumb accusation that I'm a drunk:

Sweetie, we don't make fun of you for being drunk because we give a shit whether you (or anybody else) actually drinks or not -- we make fun of you for being drunk because you're silly and clueless about just about everything. It's kind of a metaphor, and the beauty is you never get it.

Is dumb little chris — "kwissy" — accusing Palladian of being any kind of Puritan?

Thus proving my point.

Just taunting poor kwis, who goes back to his Puritan insults:

"Wow. Palladian's really been nipping at the cooking sherry again."

"Nipping at the cooking sherry"? He adopts the phraseology of senior citizens half a century ago. Lord. Are you watching reruns of "The Beverly Hillbillies"

Apparently, you've never heard of deliberately using an anachronism to ironic effect. Thus proving my point again.

are you actually the abstemious little prick you pretend to be?

Thus proving my point again, with the added bonus of looking ridiculously humor-deprived.

All this disparaging talk in this thread about the "left" and "lefties." The reason I chose my pseudonym (actually, it was ascribed to me by "Quaker Ranter" Martin Kelley, and I adopted it as my own) is that it is both a very accurate (in terms of what the "left" historically represents) description of my politics (or rather, apolitics), and also perversely misleading. A typical liberal looking here or to my blog for a kindred soul would be in for an unpleasant surprise. See Karl Hess, a late great American, on "the left-right spectrum," available at http://wconger.blogspot.com/2005/08/karl-hess-left-right-spectrum.html

Actually, though, I think I'm going to drop the pseudonym shortly and resume commenting and blogging under my own name. I was a little spooked by a visit to one of my blog posts on tax evasion by somebody from usdoj.gov, and thought I would take this modest measure to protect my privacy from government snoops, but to hell with it.

btw if i started a diary in koslandthat's a diary not dairyi don't like cowsanyway if i started a diary over thereand i came on and started sayingronald reagan is god etchow long before i would be squashedlike a bug...seems to me no matter how messyand parallel and non-linear you want to besomebody is top dog if not top cowand in chargeall you old apple people willremember the dogcow from the dayswhen nobody was in charge over there

Thers, you failed to apologize for encouraging stalking on your blog. And don't you think that you are rather obtuse not to realize that calling me "Miss Havisham" is sexist (even as you mix up two sexist references in referring to me)? Why don't you go write some more front page blog posts about me? those aren't "diaries" to be ignored, are they? You've been a disreputable little creep for the longest time.

True, true. She calls lots of people "little creeps," but "insolent" is a mark of honor, I'd say.

Incidentally, have you tried to explain to her the difference between trolls and stalkers? I don't think our host understands the difference, but her puzzlement over the Kos site format is instructive.

Incidentally, have you tried to explain to her the difference between trolls and stalkers? I don't think our host understands the difference, but her puzzlement over the Kos site format is instructive.

It's pretty clear that Althouse never understands anything it is convenient for her to not understand, no matter how simple it is in reality.

If she were really worried about the issue of "trolls" she could always get Haloscan, which is free and allows IP blocking. Or go to another platform altogether. That's what I'd suggest if she seemed to at all care about solving a problem as opposed to playing the victim.

You ought to be responsible about what you put up on your blog before you put it up. Did you realize the subject of the post written by your coblogger is a former student of mine? I think that as a reader of this blog you had to know that. Yet you presented it as a big joke as if I am just a ridiculous fictional character who simply doesn't count as a real person who could be stalked. I suppose I don't count to you because you disagree with me politically.

If you were a decent person, you would say now that you didn't understand, and you should have been more careful and you would apologize to me. If you still don't understand, then you need to think about why I am unable to tell you more in this format.

But as a reader of this blog, you had enough information to know how reckless that was. Get it? I'm sure you'll pretend you don't, but know that I think you are low and contemptible as you pretend. So don't bother. Try to understand, and if you can't, go away.

Apparently, you have a wife. Does she care about feminism? Does she care about the problem of women being stalked over the internet?

And your references to female fictional characters are sexist. Of course, you'll deny it. You think you're a good liberal, but as a man, you have to think harder than that lame self-congratulation. Those fictional characters have nothing to do with me except as sexist stereotypes that fit with your ideas about me because it seems that you have a psycho-sexual problem that urges you to belittle a strong, successful woman who doesn't accept direction from men. You ought to be embarrassed to play out your little problem in public, but you continue to do it, and I continue to think of you as a low, immoral, sexist loser.

If you want to tell me more about your "stalker," in another "format," feel free to send me an email. If your story checks out, I'll apologize.

But then again, you've used the word "stalker" to refer to people who merely comment on your blog, or then post about stuff you've on their blogs -- so it's clear you have a bizarre definition of "stalking," or have had in the past.

Also, you've shown an utter inability to take any responsibility whatsoever for your own reckless and hurtful statements, as you *know* I've documented. So I'm not going to apologize for asking for evidence of actual "stalking" according to some generally accepted consensual definition before apologizing for anything someone else said at my blog.

If you are getting "stalked," why not move to a real commenting system? Haloscan is free and you can configure it without depending on Blogger. I'm at TypePad because of creepy stuff I got about my kids. And I earn enough revenue so the (small) TP bill is paid for, nothing out of my pocket. Sheesh. Get a real commenting system if you are in fact worried about this.

I'm not a "reader" of your blog -- I come over now and again, usually from Memeorandum (as in this last case) when you say something especially ludicrous or are picking another silly blogfight. Once every two months or so, max. when that happens I go into the comments because that's often where you're at your most astonishing, and also because your gang of commenters are pretty comical specimens in their own right.

"Miss Havisham" was my wife's idea, actually, and it's apt. Your problem is you would rather bluster than back down, even when you know -- and everyone else knows -- that you're wrong. You owe apologies to people yourself.

Kirk, I would even blog about boring legal crapola. We need to assign everyone something outside the comfort zone. Reader_iam could review some rap records. Palladiancould go to the monster truck rally. Titus could review the fashions in the Sears catalog. You know out of the comfort zone.

Just saw Trooper's comment: Doing music reviews of ANY type would be out of my comfort zone. (Why rap in particular?)

Especially given my background: I escaped into different areas altogether and left the Official Music Stuff to the rest of my family--life being too short, and all.

Here's the basic template of a reader_iam music review:

"Whatever floats your boat. Different Strokes for different folks. The end."

***

I did dabble in just a little bit of arts writing back in college, but quickly gave it up. Way, way, waaaaay too stressful, living in fear of a Letter to the Editor written by my own freakin' (music prof) father.

Well reader, I would pay good money to read your review of some of the old school jams such as 2 Live Crews’ classic: Sports Weekend (As Nasty As They Wanna Be Part II). Or anything by 50 Cent, The Game or Little Kim. Just hold the qualifying clauses down just a tad. Ya know Hemmingway it up baby. NY Post style. “Headless body in Topless Bar.” Out of the comfort zone. I know you can do it the tabloid way. Peace.

Thers, it is perfectly obvious that I allow people to disagree with me here, so could you give me any reason whatsoever why you could conclude that my banning of one person could be based on my rejection of disagreement? It is obviously illogical. And think it through. How could I tell you the details of why I have a problem with this one person who is a graduate of my school? If you had any decency, you would back down. I can't confide in you about a former student!

I don't have a bizarre definition of stalking. I have cited Wisconsin statutes. A Wisconsin student was arrested today for attacking professors on line. I'll do a post about it later and you can read it. There actually is more law here than you may realize.

I was told by experts here in Wisconsin that what this commenter was doing is considered stalking under the state criminal law. "Stalking" was not my word. I would have said harassment. I mean, really, what sort of person refuses to leave a former professor alone? Maybe you think it is just a joke because it is a woman harassing a woman. That's just one more dimension to your sexism. With some homophobia on top.

"If you are getting "stalked," why not move to a real commenting system?"

Look, my choice of software is no excuse for your bad behavior.

"I'm not a "reader" of your blog -- I come over now and again, usually from Memeorandum (as in this last case) when you say something especially ludicrous or are picking another silly blogfight."

You coblog with someone who encouraged a stalker. She just wrote another post emphasizing her position. Why do you coblog with her. Is that your wife?

""Miss Havisham" was my wife's idea, actually, and it's apt. Your problem is you would rather bluster than back down, even when you know -- and everyone else knows -- that you're wrong."

So you take direction from your wife? Loser. I thought you were an English professor. Aren't you embarrassed to make literary allusions that make no sense other than as sexist epithets?

You are a man attacking a woman with sexist remarks and you are encouraging a stalker. Shame on you.

Is Miss Havisham a character who would rather bluster than back down, even when she knows she's wrong?

What crap understanding of English literature you have. You, an English professor.

And what sort of English professor writes comments like this in a female professor's blog? I don't go over to your blog and carry on, and I sure as hell wouldn't do a front page post about you, replete with some stupid ugly photo. Imagine me doing a front page post with a picture of Frankenstein and make up a bunch of lies about your problems. It's obviously something I'd never do.

Trooper York: My Christmas gift to you is posted in the comments thread attached to Althouse's post titled: "Is the administration just washing its hands of the intractable Iranian nuclear issue by saying, 'If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke'?"

Since you want me to commit a personal non sequitur, I figure I might as well DO it as such: present my stab as a non sequitur.